The Cat Sitter’s Cradle (26 page)

“Little lady, that’s none of my business. I still gotta fill out a report.”

I started rummaging through my pockets, pretending to look for my wallet. “Great.
My boyfriend finds out I got heart trouble and right away he runs out and gets another
girl, and now I’m gonna get busted for it.”

He looked up. “You got heart trouble?”

I shifted my weight and glared at him. “Yeah, and I gotta take Plavix every day and
I got a twenty-four-hour headache from it, too, but what do you care?”

He held out his wrinkled hand and showed me his ID bracelet. It had a white symbol
printed on it, like a six-sided snowflake.

I said, “So what is that supposed to be?”

“It’s my medical ID bracelet. It says I take a blood thinner every day to prevent
another heart attack.”

I said, “Huh. Am I supposed to wear one of those?”

He’d suddenly taken on a fatherly tone. “Well, you should. If you ever got knocked
out and taken to the hospital, they’d need to know. And if you’re having headaches
every day, you gotta report that to your doctor. That’s not a good sign at all, young
lady.”

I pushed my hands down in my pockets, slightly squeezing my breasts together with
my arms. “Seriously?”

My friend Judy at the diner always says, “If you’ve got tit, flaunt tit.” I’m not
particularly proud of myself in these moments, but it works. He led me back down the
side of the warehouse, kicking the occasional piece of trash out of the way, and helped
me into the Bronco.

I said, “Thank you so much for letting me go this time. I really appreciate it.”

He shook his head angrily, and I felt a little guilty for riling him up.

“What kind of asshole runs out on his girlfriend just cuz he finds out she’s got heart
problems? I hope you’re gonna dump his ass right away.”

I nodded as I put the Bronco in gear. “Oh, yes, sir. That man has no idea what I got
in store for him.”

24

I drove home in a daze. Paco’s truck was under the carport, and so was his Harley,
but Michael’s car was gone, which meant they’d probably gone out fishing for dinner.
I stripped off my clothes and took a good long shower, letting the hot water soothe
my aching brain and body. I padded naked into the combination closet-office and sat
down at my desk, looking at all the unopened bills I’d let pile up. The last thing
on earth I felt like doing now was going through bills, so I pulled on a pair of sweatpants
and an old faded T-shirt and tied my hair back in a ponytail.

I stripped the sheets off my bed and threw them in the washer with some dish towels
and a couple of pairs of work shorts. Normally I would have checked the pockets to
make sure I’d emptied everything out first, but I didn’t this time—either I was too
tired or too lazy or both. You’d think by now I’d know better, considering I once
washed my cell phone on the delicate cycle. Turns out it’s not so delicate.

While the washer hummed along doing its mindless job, I did the same in the kitchen
with a brush and a bottle of bleach spray. I started with the countertops, which are
made of some unlikely amalgamation of white marble and plastic that was popular when
my apartment was put in, and then I moved on to the metal-faced cabinets on the wall.
I scrubbed the stovetop to within an inch of its life, and by the time I had finished
with the kitchen sink, it glittered like a cat’s eye in the mirror.

I took a deep breath and let the lingering chlorine vapors fill my lungs and hoped
they were disinfecting me on the inside. I collapsed on the bare mattress in my bedroom
and stared up at the ceiling. The sun was sinking low in the sky, and the only light
was a melon orange glow coming through the long narrow window near the ceiling.

I knew now that it wasn’t drugs that August was dealing. It was birds. Sarasota may
have a lot of birds, but we’ve got nothing on Guatemala. There are at least seven
hundred species there, and more than twenty of those are rare and endangered, meaning
they’re more likely to fetch a pretty penny on the black market. Guatemala was the
ideal place for August to get all the fine-feathered merchandise he needed to keep
his “shop” fully stocked.

Also, I finally knew for certain why Corina had so much cash in her purse. August
had hired her to smuggle the birds into the country for him. He had probably paid
for her transportation, tacked on a few thousand dollars per bird for her trouble,
and then passed the merchandise on to rare-bird collectors, pet shops, and dealers.
With just one or two resplendent quetzals a month, he could make enough money to buy
a new Fiero Miyata and have plenty of cash left over to party.

I knew all about the average bird enthusiast, like Joyce, who gets great pleasure
and joy from her “collection” of rare-bird sightings, but it was hard to imagine the
type of collector who wants more, who isn’t satisfied with mere sightings but will
pay thousands and thousands of dollars to hold that rare bird, alive, in his hands—even
if it means taking that bird away from its home and stuffing it in a metal cage for
the rest of its life. Not to mention risking the total extinction of the species as
a whole.

That’s a kind of pure selfishness that I just cannot comprehend.

I could, on some level, come up with a way to forgive Corina. In her case it was a
means of survival, of providing for her newborn baby. She was just a cog in the wheel
of a much larger, more sinister machine—an important part of that machine, for sure—but
I doubted even she knew exactly what kind of damage she was partly responsible for.

August, on the other hand, I couldn’t explain away so easily. He’d had every advantage
in life that a person could ever hope for. Wealthy, white, male, educated, with parents
to take care of him and put a roof over his head. There was no excuse. With the death
of his stepfather, I knew he’d be going through a rough time, and with his mother
so distraught, things were certainly not going to get easier for him anytime soon.
But I also knew I didn’t have a choice—I would have to report what I knew about him.

I heard a car coming up the driveway to the house, and I recognized it right away.
Michael’s car makes a particular kind of sound as it rolls over the crushed shells.
I don’t know if it’s the weight of the car or the width of the tires or what, but
I’ve heard it so many times I could probably recognize it in my sleep. Then I heard
the sound of car doors shutting and their footsteps crunching across the courtyard
to the deck.

“Hey, Dixie!”

I hopped off the bed and ran through the apartment to the French doors. Michael and
Paco were posed under the balcony, holding up a line of freshly caught fish and grinning
up at me, all shirtless and muscled. They looked like one of those racy postcards
all the souvenir shops sell that show perfectly tanned, hunky men with bulging muscles,
and have cheesy captions like
NICE CATCH!

I said, “Hey, nice catch!”

Michael grinned. “We’re firing up the grill. Dinner in twenty minutes.”

I threw my fists in the air and cried, “Yippee!”

It looked as if the day might end on a high note after all. I raced over and turned
on my CD player, and while Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal” pumped through the
apartment, I shuffled into the closet, shucked off my sweatpants and T-shirt, and
starting pawing through my sad collection of clothing. I wanted to look nice for dinner,
not just because I was excited to have my men back and a nice home-cooked dinner,
but because I remembered Ethan had said he might be stopping by for a little bit.

I pulled on a clean pair of faded jeans and a gauzy white dress shirt and finished
it off with a cute pair of wedge sandals. Then I bopped my way into the bathroom and
pulled out my little makeup kit. I was half surprised it wasn’t covered in cobwebs.
I put on a love smudge of eyeshadow and some nearly translucent pink lip gloss. My
hair was still a little damp, so I pulled out my hair dryer from under the counter
and blew it out.

Just as I was about to sprint out the door, my office phone rang. I ran over and shut
the music off so I could hear who it was, but no way in hell was I answering it, unless
of course it had something to do with one of my pets.

I jumped a bit when I heard Detective McKenzie’s familiar voice. “Dixie, we just got
the report from the medical examiner on Mr. Harwick. I have a couple of questions
for you. Can you call me right away?”

As if it had a mind of its own, my hand reached out to grab the receiver, but I stopped
it. Detective McKenzie could at least wait until after dinner. There couldn’t possibly
have been anything in that report that required some urgent piece of information from
me. I waited for the machine to click off and then skipped down the stairs two at
a time.

Michael and Paco had laid out a picnic on the outdoor table. On their way home, they’d
stopped by Morton’s Market and picked up some of my all-time favorites: a creamy potato
salad with fresh dill, crusty sourdough baguettes, and pear and blackberry tartlets.
The fish was whole snapper that Michael had marinated in white wine and olive oil
while the grill heated up. It was cooked to perfection, crispy on the outside, light
and flaky on the inside, sprinkled with coarse sea salt and freshly ground pepper
and topped with a few aromatic sprigs of fresh rosemary.

It was heavenly.

Paco set a bucket packed full of ice and frosty bottles of beer on the ground next
to the table. “Hey, did you hear they found the Harwick girl?”

I stopped with a forkful of snapper poised at my lips. “What?”

“Yep. She was in Miami.”

“Miami? Where did you hear that?”

“It was on the news. They said she went to visit a friend who’s in college there.”

Michael narrowed his eyes and looked at me. “Did you know about that?”

I saw him notice my hair and makeup, but if he thought anything about it he didn’t
say. “No, I swear she didn’t say a word about that to me.”

Paco said, “She says she didn’t know anything about her stepfather until she saw it
on TV, but nobody’s buying it because her whole family didn’t know where she was.
I guess the cops still think she’s a suspect.”

I said, “Oh, no. I think I might be partly responsible for that. I told Becca she’d
have to tell her parents she was pregnant sooner or later, but she was terrified.
I wonder if she decided it would be easier to just run away.”

Michael muttered, “Seems to be a lot of that going on lately.”

“So where is she now?”

“She’s back. They said she’s in a hotel with her mother and brother.”

I said, “Yeah, the investigators are done with the house, but Mrs. Harwick isn’t ready
to go back yet. I still have their cat at the Kitty Haven.”

Paco nodded. I could tell he felt sorry for Charlotte, but he was also holding something
back. Whatever he knew about the Harwick case, he wasn’t saying.

Michael said, “Okay, can I interject here for a second? We have this amazing fish
and all this fantastic food in front of us, and all you guys can talk about is pregnant
teenage runaways and dead bodies. Can we please talk about something else?”

My cell phone rang. I fished it out of my pocket, ignoring Michael as he shot a disapproving
look in my direction. It was Detective McKenzie again. I muted the ringer and laid
it back down on the table.

Paco smiled mischeviously. “Okay, let’s change the subject. Why don’t we tell Dixie
what you said to that woman at the market today.”

Michael said, “Oh, let’s not.”

“What happened?”

Paco said, “This woman saw all the cartons of potato salad and prepared foods that
Michael was putting in the basket. She winked at Michael and said, ‘Looks like somebody
needs a woman to cook him up a nice homemade meal.’ So Michael said, ‘Yeah, except
I think my partner wouldn’t be too happy about that.’ Well, apparently she thought
he meant his
business
partner, because she said, ‘What kind of business are you in that he has a say in
it?’”

I laughed. “Oh, no. What did you say to her?”

Michael deadpanned, “I said, ‘Monkey business.’”

I nearly fell out of my chair laughing.

Paco put his arm out to keep my chair from falling over backward. “She said, ‘Oh,
that’s interesting!’ and just kept on shopping, like it was the most normal thing
in the world.”

Michael grinned. “I think she must have thought I was a monkey trainer for the circus.”

It felt good to just sit and laugh, to forget about everything that was happening
outside of our little world. We finished our beers and watched as the sun sank deeper
behind the ocean, leaving behind a slow-motion trail of undulating ribbons of pink
and orange light in the darkening sky.

My cell phone rang again. This time I jumped for it. It was Ethan.

Michael started to shoot me another of his signature disapproving looks, but I rolled
my eyes and said, “Oh please, you don’t scare me. I have to answer this one.”

I walked away from the table and flipped open my phone.

“Hey.”

“Hey there. What are you doing?”

Even the sound of Ethan’s voice made my heart speed up a little bit. “I’m sitting
here with my favorite men in the world having dinner.”

“Your favorite men? Shouldn’t I be there?”

“Yes, you should. Come over. We’ve got fresh fish on the grill and ice-cold beer.”

“Nice! I’m on my way.”

I hung up and walked back to the table.

Michael said, “Who was that?”

“Ethan,” I said demurely.

Michael raised one eybrow. “Really?”

He and Paco shared a look.

Paco said, “How’s he doing, anyway?”

I sat down and scooped another serving of potato salad onto my plate.

“You can ask him yourself. He’s coming over.”

*   *   *

When Ethan arrived, he and Michael and Paco all stood around on the deck with their
hands in their pockets, swaying back and forth and talking in that deep-toned, monosyllabic
way that men do when they’re a little uncomfortable. Then suddenly Michael and Paco
disappeared inside, and Ethan and I were left alone.